Law Commons^™

Medical Judgment In Court And In Congress - Abortion, Refusing Treatment, And Drug Regulation, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past four decades, the courts and Congress have consistently granted almost unqualified deference to physicians (and medical ethics), at least for treatment decisions made in the context of a consensual physician-patient relationship. The primary exception to this harmonious deference is the 2007 abortion decision of Gonzales v. Carhart, 127 S. Ct. 1610 (2007), and it is reasonable to review our continuing and seemingly intractable legal debate over abortion and the physician's role in it to determine if it could erode judicial and congressional deference to medical judgment in other areas of medical practice and medical ethics.

Pharma On The Hot Seat, Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The pharmaceutical industry has been receiving greater scrutiny lately due in large part to the many public and private legal enforcement actions taken against pharmaceutical manufacturers. These enforcement actions, along with legal developments such as the OIG Compliance Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s statutory guidelines for public corporations, the HIPAA privacy regulations, and the Medicare Modernization Act, have the potential to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to self-regulate beyond the bounds currently required by the law. After a brief overview of enforcement actions and compliance programs directed toward the pharmaceutical industry, this Article reviews a similar situation the hospital …

The Health Care Choice Act: The Individual Insurance Market And The Politics Of 'Choice', Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, employer-sponsored group insurance plans have been the backbone of health insurance coverage in the United States. While it is still true that most Americans get their health insurance through their employment, the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance has increased the ranks of the uninsured and pushed more workers, retirees and their families into the individual insurance market. In 2005, for example, nine percent of the population, or nearly 27 million people, turned to individual policies for health insurance coverage.

The Health Care Choice Act of 2005 (the "Act") currently before Congress aims to reform perceived problems in the individual …

Introduction, Karen H. Rothenberg, Diane E. Hoffmann

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Medicine And Public Health: Crossing Legal Boundaries, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

In 2006, New York City began a mandatory reporting system for laboratories to submit blood sugar (A1c) test results (primarily for diabetes) to the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene without the patient's consent. This article examines whether this new program is an innovative way to improve New Yorkers' health, an invasion of medical privacy, or usurpation of the physician's role. The registry is an example of public health initiatives in chronic diseases, which challenge the limits of laws governing medicine care and public health programs by blurring the historical boundaries between them.

Foreword: The Politics Of Health Law: Any Tipping Points In View?, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Malcolm Gladwell explored the way certain ideas and behaviors can proliferate "just like viruses do" once they achieve a critical mass in The Tipping Point,' his best-seller about the sorts of widespread and rapidly adopted social phenomena he labels epidemics. Gladwell's subtitle, "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," indicates that he thinks it need not take much to get one of these social epidemics rolling. He does believe, however, that three factors are essential: getting "people with a particular and rare set of social gifts" involved,² packaging the ideas so they are "irresistible" under the circumstances, ^{3 …}

Mris And The Perception Of Risk, Steven Goldberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The most important safety decision concerning MRIs was to change the name of the procedure. In the late 1970s, the procedure known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) became magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because of the negative connotations the word “nuclear” invited. The change was understandable since MRIs do not expose patients to dangerous radiation: “nuclear” was in the original name because basic research on the atomic nucleus led to the development of MRIs. The main cost of the name change was to obscure the important link between basic research and useful medical technologies.

In recent years, however, MRIs, a generally …

Mandatory Gun Ownership, The Militia Census Of 1806, And Background Assumptions Concerning The Early American Right To Arms: A Cautious Response To Robert Churchill, William G. Merkel

William G. Merkel